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‘Ultimate example of how not to engage in PR’

Add two egregious Facebook gaffes to an ever-growing list of social media flubs.

The first culprit is KFC Thailand, which issued an apology after it posted a message urging people to hurry home due to Wednesday’s tsunami scare and order a bucket of the Colonel’s original recipe chicken. Terrible choice, I think we can all agree.

“Let's hurry home and follow the earthquake news. And don't forget to order your favorite KFC menu.”

But the KFC Thailand team wasn’t alone in its blunder.

Fast car purveyor Lotus is going through some tough times. And, like a disgruntled teen lashing out at his or her tormentors, the company took to Facebook to address a few rumors—five to be exact. Read the full rant here.

Car blog Jalopnik said it was “meant to be a response to media reports about the automaker's financial problems, management instability, and one mostly harmless joke.”

In the rant, Lotus responded to a joke made at its expense by parody auto news site SniffPetrol. The site created an image in which Lotus CEO Dany Bahar is dressed like “Baghdad Bob,” the late information minister in Iraq (“There are no American infidels in Baghdad”), with a cartoon bubble saying, “There are no problems at Lotus.”

As Jalopnik points out, the company first sent the image, along with a press release addressing the rumors, to Lotus owners in the form of a press release. It then posted all of the material to its Facebook page. As a result, “it quickly became the ultimate example of how not to engage in public relations on social media,” according to Jalopnik.